Navjot Kaur's Blog

Before the Radcliffe line in 1947, there was Sanjha Panjab – a territory sharing language, food and agricultural knowledge. Cyril Radcliffe had never even visited the region, nor were the United Nations invited to the conversation – a deliberate decision to avoid delays – the British empire wanted to show that they could govern themselves without any support from the ‘outside’.

We Are Cheesemakers, illustrated by Parmeet Arora Bori, ©Saffron Press, 2025.

Divisions were drawn in secret and with much haste. Almost overnight, Sanjha Panjab became Charda Panjab and Lehnda Panjab – cutting through the heart of Panjabis on the east and west of a line, drawn without regard for the people who would be pushed away from their homes or those pulled towards uncertainty. Rivers were divided too, leaving the land and people broken.

We Are Cheesemakers, illustrated by Parmeet Arora Bori, ©Saffron Press, 2025

The current devastation of the flooding in Panjab has impacted millions of inhabitants in over 1000 villages, on both sides of the Radcliffe line. It happened because of decades of State neglect and mismanagement of waterways, dams and rainwater. Groundwater has been almost depleted, leading to farmers taking their lives in acts of desperation. Instead of partnering with agricultural workers and soil scientists of local universities to find innovative solutions, the State has ignored the danger of the climate crisis, systematically destroying the land by poisoning soils and canals with chemicals and simultaneously, the psyche of resistance in the people of Panjab. It was not just a natural disaster, it is devastation by design.

Please donate now to support the people of Panjab:

Khalsa Aid

Pakistan Floods and here

Humanitet

Dasvand Network

Support Families directly Khalsa Aid India

There has been a gluttonous trend of late – of using a popular design platform to create and sell colouring books for children – except, the art is not created by actual human artists. Before falling for this purchase, consider the work of an actual graphic artist called Ebaa and how the purchase of a colouring book can impact her life.

“because art is the only breath I have left in all this pain” – Ebaa

Ebaa’s art studio was located on the upper floor of her home in northern Gaza.
After being forcefully displaced, she walked to the south, passing tanks and unconscionable pain. “I lived in conditions unfit for human life”.

When her family were allowed to return to the north, she returned on foot, walking for two days and collapsing from sheer exhaustion, with no access to food or water. If sleep came it was while lying in the streets.

Once home, she discovered that her art studio had been completely destroyed and only a part of the home she had always known was still standing. Her father’s small fabric shop, the only source of income for the family, was now gone, captured in precious memories. Her younger sister’s health needs cannot be met due to the rising costs of unobtainable medications. They have been working to rebuild and do what artists do – create beauty in the rubble.

Ebaa draws to preserve stories, memories, and to plant hope in the midst of all that has been taken away. A colouring book: MY ARTISTIC JOURNEY TO PALESTINE is a project created to rebuild from the rubble.

“Through lovable characters and pages full of creativity and exploration, it encourages young minds to discover Palestine with their imagination and colors. It even includes a special “Artist’s Passport” for children to fill out, turning them into little artists on a mission to express love through art.”

So, instead of reaching for a non-human-generated purchase, consider a colouring book “designed with love from Gaza”, one that can inspire through art, and encourage a thoughtful connection to identity and belonging.

“Despite it all, I try to resist through art. I draw what’s left of life in Gaza to show the world that we’re still here — dreaming, loving, and creating — even in the heart of devastation.” – Ebaa

Please find links to support Ebaa directly here. Find Ebaa’s art here.

To talk about stories centred around food while simultaneously witnessing the forced starvation of populations around the world would seem thoughtless, cruel, antagonistic even, if not for the fact that food, like most of what we consume, is inherently political.Mona Zahed is a mother, eight times displaced Palestinian chef and published author of her very own cookbook TABKHA: Recipes from Under the Rubble . When we chatted a couple of days ago, she had walked for hours to find flour. She says hunger has worn their bodies down. We can help. TABKHA began as an idea from her tent in Gaza where she documented ancestral recipes. She met Akko, a Japanese chef online who suggested Mona create a booklet that could be sold to raise funds. Chef Akko helped Mona start the process and then sold copies in Germany and Japan. Coffees for Gaza, an initiative requesting donations for the price of a coffee to raise funds for families, supported Mona to develop the booklet into an illustrated recipe book. Once a passionate entrepreneur, running a catering business, Mona’s food was enjoyed by friends and family at events and celebrations. Her most loved recipes – twenty-two in the first edition – are a form of resistance, ensuring that her heritage lives and her book – published by Slingshot Books – serves not only to nourish her and her family but many other families in her community along the way. If you are still unsure of what collective liberation looks like – this is it, in action. TABKHA is a cookbook you want to hold in your hands, experiment with the beautifully illustrated recipes, each one by its very own artist, and savour. Mona offers vegetarian and vegan recipes among the collection. If you’ve been wondering how you can support families in Gaza, please consider purchasing this book. All proceeds will go directly to support Mona and her community. Purchase TABKHA: Recipes from Under the Rubble by pre ordering the second edition, complete with additional recipes from Slingshot Books. I also found it available in Canada at Seedling Books.You can follow Mona and her family’s journey online here. Learn more about editions of Tabkha Book here.

As an educator, how would you continue teaching young children, when all that remains is a tent, with limited access to any food or water and no educational resources, libraries or books? Just you. Instead of keeping them engaged, your primary goal is to keep them distracted – from the fear of constant shelling, pain and hunger from forced starvation – most importantly, to keep them alive. Psychological safety is paramount and physical safety is fragile, uncertain. What would you do?

By documenting the reality on the ground, librarians in Gaza have shown us a world where caring for children is a human responsibility. Tents have been used as classrooms, offering glimpses of hope and tiny moments of joy for children experiencing a version of life that should never exist on this earth.

Story Sunbirds is a kidlit collective rooted in justice, anti-racism and anti-colonialism. This group is made up of creators including writers, illustrators and publishing professionals, the very people rooted in creating work for children, in a world where the basic human rights of children should never be in question.

In partnership with IBBY (International Board on Books for Young Children), Story Sunbirds launched the #LibrariesAreHavens fundraiser to support Gaza’s Librarians and to provide essential humanitarian aid for displaced children and surviving families. These spaces have become sanctuaries of hope when schools, libraries and homes have been reduced to rubble. It is impossible to look away.

Please support #LibrariesAreHavens and help Story Sunbirds with their goal of raising $10,000 USD for children by June 1st, 2025. The children of Gaza are our children.

With the recent book launch event for We Are Cheesemakers, we were able to contribute $200.00 towards this goal and we believe it takes all of us to make a difference. If you love books and believe in the human dignity of all children, then please donate whatever you are able. I have shared the links below:

In Canada, donations can be made through IBBY Canada – please direct your donation to #LibrariesAreHavens in the Notes field.

IBBY Canada https://www.ibby-canada.org/join-donate/#donation

Story Sunbirds Campaign https://storysunbirds.substack.com/p/ibby-x-story-sunbirds-libraries-are?r=3k80op&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

Please check out these books from your local library and continue the conversation.

#LibrariesAreHavens

#IBBY

#StorySunbirds

#ChildrenInCrisisFund

#KidLitCommunity

#WhereStoriesGrow

#SaffronPress

CHALLENGE INJUSTICEThese are the words that come to mind when thinking of Vaisakhi. It’s not the food, festivals or folktales but the fierce commitment to being an upstander. Knowing that if we see something, we cannot unsee it. The more I continue to study and learn, the more I’ve been able to grow and shift conditioning of what we believe to be true. I cannot unsee the horror of this world – the 20,000+ children whose lives have been brutally taken by force and still, no justice.“And a promise was made that day. They would share the seedlings from the Garden of Peace and plant them alongside their local crops. The Khalsa promised to give each other a fair chance to grow, with the weeds of course. Weeds were plants too, after all.” (The Garden of Peace, 2017, Saffron Press).As educators we are always asking students to infer and interpret. I feel that’s at the core of all learning. And this is also true of Vaisakhi – a time to contemplate, think upon and evolve. What is our role in communities? How do we care for each other? Who is being trodden upon? Do we remain silent while witnessing human rights abuses? Or do we call for justice?

©Saffron Press 2017, The Garden of Peace. Written by Navjot Kaur, illustrated by Nana Sakata

How can you interpret the seedlings?For me, they are the five steps to become the kind of humans who would stand for the liberation of all, beginning with Daya. Each action requires us to push further, to challenge ourselves and to become uncomfortable before we can become agents of change.The Garden of Peace required the most research of all titles so far, given the need for historical context. One of the most beautiful insights was the learning that the Panj Pyaray travelled from each ‘corner’ of undivided India (then including Pakistan, Bangladesh and even beyond some say) to reach Anandpur – the city of happiness. Today, borders are becoming deeper and higher which ultimately will result in some sort of resistance. I wonder what that looks like for each of us? Does it impact us today or will it show up in months or even years to come? We are all interconnected, whether we are here or over there – when 20,000+ childrens’ human rights are erased before our eyes, we have to question how this can happen.Days and heritage months come and go. We can either perform or work to reform.​SARBAT DA BHALLA: for the collective liberation of all!

The image of the sister and brother hiding under a blanket in their little ‘tug boat’ will hopefully encourage conversations about migration and displacement journeys. There are so many emotions felt while along this upheaval – loss, trauma, pain – each journey holds its own share of response, depending on the experience.

The fear and anxiety in the faces of these siblings tells a story of its own. Leaving home is not always a choice and making a home somewhere new is not easy, not even when it is a choice to move.

Today, I received a review from a teacher who has listened to the audiobook; someone who had not yet seen the illustrations or held a copy of We Are Cheesemakers in their hands; someone who could only interpret the story through listening. She shared her gratitude for a story about migrants, as she had taught children going through migration journeys in her kindergarten classroom. Can you imagine the fears of these children? This is real. This is now.

Our stories have meaning and when written and illustrated with intention, they can have sustainable impact. I’m deeply grateful for your support of a small, independent press publishing stories that hopefully help us interpret and connect with the experiences of children everywhere.

To learn more about We Are Cheesemakers and the story process, please read an interview with Danielle Davis here.

 

This is a project that has been difficult to ‘reveal’ given the heartache of the world.

When we are witnessing harsher border divisions, trade wars, watching young people prepared for deportation, chained and handcuffed, where stolen land, soil and rivers are being poisoned and partitioned once more, We Are Cheesemakers brings issues of food and climate justice to the forefront, continuing the mission of Saffron Press to move little citizens of change to reimagine this broken world.

As a daughter of immigrants with an ancestral heritage to the land, I have often heard the stories of waiting for a ‘stamp’. I have seen migrant workers on the farms in BC and California. A stamp is what they yearn for – a dream that somehow gives you permission to belong, that gives you a date and place to call home. This story draws a parallel with the patient maturation of parmigiano reggiano cheese making and the endless waiting for a stamp on a passport.

We Are Cheesemakers is illustrated by the lovely Parmeet Arora Bori whose patience with this project has been a gift.I am deeply grateful for the love and support received during the development of this story. Community is key in all parts of this work. I hope you will stay and learn more about the process and research around this story.

There are also gifts for pre orders! Please share this post and help amplify our work.

Some personal thoughts…In a speech, at “The Personal and the Political Panel” at the Second Sex Conference in New York, September 29, 1979, Audre Lorde implores the  audience to think critically about the communities we align ourselves with and the intersections that are left out. Who does it benefit to ignore those differences? When the oppressed are kept occupied with survival, oppressors continue to oil the cogs of the systems that were built to sustain their power.At the core, Audre Lorde‘s comments stand to challenge what today we might refer to as a culturally relevant lens, including the intersectionalities of race, gender, class, age and sexuality. Her statements question the love between feminists who identify beyond white and Black and this is a poignant note to consider.As we have witnessed, the silence of feminists considering the oppression of Palestinian lives, has been evident. Where is the love for Palestinian women and their families? This could be asked of every community currently experiencing war, displacement, hunger and starvation.And this is why these words matter. “Difference must be not merely tolerated…” Community is not active in silos, it has to acknowledge different identities and experiences to truly work for liberation.

When words are spoken directly from the mouths of children, there are few, if any other words that can compare. Recent reports provide proof of the truths these children from G@za have expressed for over nine months now. Tens of thousands of these children and their families have been killed and yet this violence is sanctioned by those in positions of power and continues without reprieve. Yesterday, another massacre at al-Mawasi, in Khan Younis – a humanitarian zone, designated to shelter displaced people – left children under rubble once again. Images that would be considered too graphic for children to see are being enacted upon them and these images will never leave our minds or our hearts.

A million kites, is described as a “little-big book” by the curator, Leila Boukarim. This collection was gathered and translated by this wonderful human, alongside Asaf Luzon @iaitms who has contributed the compassionate artwork. ALL profits from this book are being donated to causes supporting the people of G@za. If you can do one thing, please purchase this book.

A post from Leila holds a mirror to the broader world we live in. At a recent art studios event, when doors open to the public for 48 hours, Leila shares the discomfort of visitors walking by their display of A Million Kites. It truly struck me at my core – I felt the grief and deep disappointment – as a moment to reflect on, as a moment to remember that this is very much a reality and not taking place in some concocted dystopian future, and yet many people are moving along, without consciously interacting with the display. A sample of the population, their inner thoughts and the individualism we know exists ‘out there’ was also displayed through those 48 hours. It is shared, I am sure by many more who are still grappling with their interpretation of the truth.

The truth. They say it comes straight “out of the mouths of babes.” Buy this book. Read these poems, please.

https://www.amillionkites.com

Source:

United Nations

This June, 2024 is the 40th year of remembrance. Forty years of waiting for justice. Forty years of yearning for the Disappeared. Forty years of collective pain.

The first ten days of June are a solemn marker of the historical trauma experienced by generations of Sikh families around the world. In 1984, the army of the Indian state launched an attack on Darbar Sahib – known widely as The Golden Temple – in Amritsar, Panjab, one of the most revered historical sites of Sikhi. The apparent goal was to ‘destroy the extrem*sts’, ‘ter*or*sts’, or whatever narrative framed the political appeal.

A meticulously planned strategy, launched assault on multiple Sikh sites – on an auspicious religious holiday – a correlation that would maximize the targeting of a specific group of humans. Official numbers of civilian casualties remain unknown but our collective memory has preserved the horrors and truths of the tens of thousands who were brutally massacred.

Photograph ©Saffron Press
Taken at Exhibit titled 1984: Path of the Warrior Saints at PAMA

Termed Operation Blue Star, a curfew began, locking thousands of devotees in strategic sites throughout Panjab. As with most politically-driven acts of violence, then came a complete media blackout. Foreign journalists were forced to leave, phone lines cut and news stations were carefully censored. This did not happen overnight, and historical context reveals the powers that had been at play for years leading to this annihilation.

At a recent gathering, I heard from community activists, about how even the few phone calls received between family members at the time were heavily censored and how mail was infiltrated. History had to be preserved through memory.

Eyewitness accounts speak of the indiscriminate deaths, of the targeting of the dastaar and homes of Sikh families being marked using voting lists, of the stench of burning flesh. Rubber tires were put over the heads of Sikh men and then burned.

Official casualties sit at around 3000. And yet, 10,000 pairs of shoes were left at the doors of just one of those sites of attack, where the Army barred doors and windows, preventing any escape.

Forty years later, we remember how humanity was lost at its core. We remember the relentless work of human rights activists like Jaswant Singh Ji Khalra who raised their voices for the Disappeared, despite the callous torture and oppression. We remember our collective grief. We remember the mothers still waiting for their children to return, sisters whose bodies were ravaged, our hair weaponized, families holding on to memories of a time, then unimaginable.

Ya Tayr Still Life (art print) © Keerat Kaur. Click image to purchase – 50% of proceeds go to helping a family in G@za. No copyright infringement intended.

We are witnessing carnage and savagery now and it is being filmed in real time, in Gaza, Rafah, in Sudan and Congo. We cannot ever turn away from the genocide of our people in 1984 and we absolutely cannot turn away from what we are witnessing today. Liberation is collective. We are all connected through our humanity. May we never lose it.

In solidarity.

Links for further learning:

Faith, Gender and Activism in the Punjab Conflict: The Wheat Fields Still Whisper by Mallika Kaur (Palgrave McMillan 2019)

Ensaaf website

The Valiant – Jaswant Singh Khalra by Gurmeet Kaur, illustrated by Inkquisitive

A digital archive 1984.org

Please consider supporting:

Operation Olive Branch

Coffees for Gaza

A Million Kites https://www.amillionkites.com

Donation.deaf.gaza